Resource: Depression / Low Mood Self-Assessment
Low mood doesn't always announce itself. For many people it arrives quietly — as flatness, reduced interest, a kind of emotional dimming that's hard to name or explain. You're still functioning. You're just not quite there.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), these experiences aren't viewed as malfunction. They're understood as protective responses — parts of the inner system that have learned to shut down, withdraw, or numb when what's being felt becomes too much to carry. The low mood isn't happening to you. In IFS terms, a part of you is producing it, and that part has a reason.
This self-assessment uses the PHQ-9 framework — a widely used tool in clinical settings, developed by Spitzer, Kroenke, and Williams (1999) — and adds IFS-informed interpretive framing. Rather than arriving at a score, you'll explore your responses through three interpretive profiles: the system in quiet shutdown, the exhausted protector, and the withdrawn exile.
What You'll Find Inside
- Ten structured reflection questions across mood, energy, body, sleep, and self-relation
- One open reflection prompt
- Three IFS-informed interpretive profiles — no scoring, no tallying
- A closing section with a gentle next step and support signposting
For more on the IFS framework behind this resource, read the paired article: IFS for Depression and Emotional Numbness: When the System Shuts Down to Survive.
Educational resource only. Not a clinical assessment. Does not constitute a diagnosis of any condition.
Who This Is For
This resource was designed for anyone who has been wondering whether what they're experiencing qualifies as depression — or who recognises something in the language of shutdown, flatness, or emotional withdrawal without being sure what to do with that recognition.
It is especially relevant for people who are still functioning well externally but feel disconnected internally; who have been told (or who tell themselves) that they have nothing to be depressed about; who have experienced burnout that has settled into something quieter and harder to lift; or who are navigating a period of significant life transition — relocation, career change, relationship change — that has left them feeling unexpectedly hollow.
It is not a diagnostic tool. If you are concerned about your mental health, or if the responses in this assessment indicate significant distress, please speak with a qualified mental health professional or your GP.
Why IFS Makes This Different
Most depression assessments are designed to measure symptom severity — useful for clinical settings, but less useful for self-understanding. This assessment does something different: it invites you to look at the same experiences through the lens of IFS, where low mood, numbness, and emotional absence are understood not as symptoms to eliminate but as protective responses with an internal logic.
When a part of the inner system shuts down, it is typically doing so in response to something else — an exile carrying pain, grief, or fear that has become too much to hold. The interpretive profiles in this resource help you begin to name which pattern resonates most with your experience, as a starting point for a different kind of relationship to what's happening internally.
Related Resources and Further Reading
If you found this self-assessment useful, these articles go deeper into the framework behind it: